How Much Does It Cost To Sell Books On Amazon
An important factor to consider is the overhead costs, delivery charges, royalties, referral fees, etc. Upfront costs include a referral fee of 15% that has to be paid to Amazon for every book that you sell along with a closing fee. There are also fees on your Professional or Individual seller account.
Apart from the upfront costs, a seller needs to factor in operating costs FBA or FBM. FBA charges can keep accumulating over time and they include charges for storage, disposal costs, penalties, and shipping. If youre an author, selling books on Amazons Kindle earns you royalties for every sale that your book makes. Simultaneously, a percentage of the book price goes to Amazon as commission.
All in all, selling books on Amazon does not cost a whole lot of money even after taking all the charges Concerning into account. This is what makes it one of the best categories to explore while selling on Amazon.
Blank Pages Big Profits: How To Sell No Content Books On Amazon
Today I’m excited to share a new way to earn money on Amazon.
And it doesn’t require shipping out orders or even sourcing inventory.
I’m talking about self-publishing your own books on Amazon.
Now before you start to panic about your less than stellar grammar skills, this kind of self-publishing doesn’t actually require you to write a book. Which is great news because that’s definitely the hardest part of self-publishing books!
On Amazon, you can create and sell low- or no-content books. And because it takes so little time to create these empty books, you can upload as many as you want.
Once you have enough books for sale, you can start to create a nice passive income stream.
It’s all possible with Amazon’s print-on-demand KDP service. I’ll show you how you can use KDP to start creating your own notebooks, journals, and planners on Amazon.
Want someone to guide you through the entire low-content creation step-by-step? I’ve got great news! We’ve recently released our Low Content Book Creation Course and have helped people like you launch hundreds of low-content books using our strategies. Check out the course here.
Promote And Market Your Books
Take advantage of Amazon tools
Promote your online book business on social media
Pay attention to reviews
- Be honest about item condition
- Ship orders on time
- Respond to customer inquiries quickly
- If issues arise, solve them as soon as possible
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Be Careful When Shipping
If youre going to do a lot of bookselling, you might want to invest in some shipping envelopes and other packing materials. Make sure youre using something that is water-resistant, and if its a book that will show bumps and dings, like a nice hardcover, make sure you wrap it carefully.
Also, dont forget to make note of the tracking numbers. The bookselling site may send you a shipping label, but youll still be responsible to make sure the book arrives at its destination, and youll need the tracking number to communicate with the post office or shipping company.
How To Sell Books On Shopify: Step By Step
Selling books on Shopify is just like starting any eCommerce business with this online store builder. Shopify is a popular tool for book selling because it comes with an easy-to-use interface, plenty of community support, and a low setup fee. You can start with a Shopify plan of only $9 per month and go all the way up to $299 per month packages.
The first step to filling your digital bookshelves with Shopify, is setting up an account. The good news is that whether youre selling old books, looking to sell used books, or retailing digital downloads, Shopify comes with excellent ease of use. Its one of the easiest platforms to use for adding products, processing orders, and more.
After creating your account, Shopify will take you to your homepage, where you can add product information, create a theme, add a domain, and more.
Step 1: Add Your Domain
A domain is the title that customers search for when theyre trying to find your store online, such as bookscouter.com or Abebooks. As a default, your domain will come with a myshopify add-on, but you can purchase a custom domain, or add one that you already have if you prefer.
Choosing a name that includes keywords like collectible might help you to rank higher in the search engines later.
Step 2: Choose and Customize Your Theme
Remember, a premium or custom theme will give you a lot more control than a free one. It also means that your store is a lot more likely to stand out from the crowd.
Step 5: Sell, Learn and Grow
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Best Wholesale Books Suppliers And Distributors Worldwide
If youve settled on an online bookstore, the next step is to look for wholesale book distributors and suppliers.
This is perhaps the most crucial aspect of running a book-based business. Purchasing inventory at wholesale rates will allow you to keep a good margin, which in turn will boost your profits.
Plus, you get discounts from wholesalers once youve developed a good relationship with them.
Below, I have compiled a list of 4 high-quality book suppliers from whom you can source all kinds of books at a low price.
Create Your Book Listing On Amazon Kdp
With your Kindle Direct Publishing account setup complete, youre free to concentrate on completing your book. When your manuscript is written and edited and your cover art is ready, its time to upload your book to Amazon KDP and make it available in Amazon.
To do this, youll create a listing for your book within your Amazon KDP dashboard. Go to your Bookshelf and click on the type of book you want to publishfor most new KDP authors, thats going to be a Kindle e-book. You can also publish from this screen if you wish.
You can create a listing for an e-book or a paperback print-on-demand book, but you can also add a paperback option to your e-book listing now or later on.
KDP leads you through a three-screen process to set up your book details, upload your e-book content and cover files, and then set your pricing. Its a very simple process, but it goes a lot faster if you have certain details ready beforehand, which we outline below.
Creating a book listing in KDP is pretty quick if you have everything prepared ahead of time.
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Mistakes To Avoid When Selling Books On Amazon Kdp
The biggest mistake to avoid when trying to sell books on Kindle Direct Publishing is to expect instant results. Selling an e-book is just like selling and marketing any other product. It takes work, time, and effort across multiple marketing outlets, and commitment. Most authors only see some return after publishing several works and marketing each one, which is what it takes to build up a reader base.
The second major mistake that new writers must avoid is publishing an amateurish work to Kindle Direct Publishing. Poorly written books that are badly edited and full of errors are a major turn-off to readers, and messy covers will never help sell your work. Plus, both mistakes go against Amazons quality guidelines. So, dont be in a hurry to publish. Take the time to edit your work and create a great coveror better yet, get a pro involved.
You can find budget-friendly freelance editors and cover designers who specialize in e-books on Fiverr. These seasoned experts are familiar with Amazons quality guidelines and will give your work the professional polish it deserves.
Select Your Amazon Categories
Amazon provides a collection of categories and subcategories to choose from. Like keyword selecting, your goal is to look for trending areas that dont have tons of competition.
If you visit your book page, these categories will appear partway down the page, displaying the rank like in the image example below.
These categories are what you will rank as a bestseller in, which is why you want to make sure you pick fitting categories that are specific, but also not super competitive. You want to stand out. That said, these do have to match the intent of the book you wrote.
You can also check the rankings of the top three books on the first page of each category.
Amazon sales ranking measures how well a product is selling compared to its competitors. All books that are ranked 2,000 or less are considered to be highly purchased products in that particular category.
Here are a few tips when publishing on Amazon in order to rank in more categories:
Unless you have an established with significant downloads and reviews, try to aim for categories with books that rank between 10,000-30,000.
Do you want to know how to rank for ten categories? Check out our blog post that details .
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Amazon Prime Prime Video And Original Content
Amazon first entered the media industry as a major online retailer in the late 90s. The company began by selling CDs and DVDs to a burgeoning market of online shoppers who began turning to the internet for music and movies, before the technical feasibility of streaming and the advent of the iPod. But it wasnt until 2005, with the initial launch of Amazon Prime, that the company began laying the ground work for a future digital media ecosystem that integrated directly into its online store.
Prime started as a two-day shipping membership for devoted Amazon shoppers, and it didnt add any additional benefits until 2011. However, since then, Prime has grown into a subscription service with more than 100 million paid users worldwide, while the service itself has evolved to include additional perks over the years, including a Prime credit card now with 5 percent cash back.
Amazon Prime Video has grown into a veritable Netflix competitor
Perhaps the most prominent Prime perk, however, is access to Amazon Prime Video. The video on-demand service started in 2006 as Amazon Unboxed, but was rebranded in 2008 and integrated into the Prime service three years later, where it became a huge selling point for Amazons annual subscription. It now boasts thousands of free TV shows, films, and games, all accessible on pretty much every screen available.
How To Sell Books Online: Do You Want To Sell Your Own Books
Are you one of those people who dont just believe they have a story to tell but have actually gotten around to writing it?
If so, congratulations!
Now its time to sell it and don’t be shy about doing so. If youre not only a writer but you’re also an online marketer and already have an online bookstore, read above!
However, if you have a day job and you just want to sell your book on the side, then using a platform that already has a more significant reach like Amazon or Blurb, is usually the easier route.
If you want to go down this road, heres what to look out for.
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If Youre Enrolling Your Title In Amazon Kdp Select
According to Dave Chesson of Kindlepreneur, Authors who enroll their titles in KDP Select tend to gain a larger audience faster due to the exposure to the massive Kindle Unlimited and Kindle Owners Lending Library reader base.
As a KDP Select title, your e-book will appear in both of these lending listings, where youre paid per-borrow and per-read, based on each programs payout plan. You can have a title in KDP Select and not participate in these lending programs, but most new authors find them to be the fastest route to gaining reviews and a reader following.
But thats not the only promotional benefit. Writers who make a real success of the KDP Select program dig deep into every aspect, not just the KU and KOLL benefits, says Chesson. Using limited-time free book promotions and Kindle Countdown Deals helps gain readers for new releases. These tactics also help bolster momentum for titles that have been published longer.
So, if you enroll your title in KDP Select, these promotional benefits are the first ones to set up.
Create An Amazon Seller Account
First, you’ll have to create an Amazon seller account. Here’s how:
1. Log in to your Amazon account or sign up if you don’t already have one. Then visit scroll to the “How to register” section, and select either “Sell as an Individual” or “Sell as a professional.”
2. Choose the country you’ll manage your virtual shop out of, and when a dropdown appears, designate the type of seller you are before clicking “Agree and continue.”
3. Next, select or enter details on your citizenship country, birth country, birthdate, proof of Identity , business address, and phone number.
4. Amazon will send a one-time pin to the phone number you provided. Enter it in the pop-up window.
5. After clicking “I Understand” to confirm you have all the necessary banking information to open a seller account, provide your financial institution information and bank account information. Then check the terms and conditions box before selecting “Verify Bank Account.”
6. On the following page, enter your credit card information and select a billing address.
7. Now input your store name, and tell Amazon whether you have UPC codes, diversity certifications, and whether you’re the manufacturer or brand owner for all or some of your products.
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Sign Up For Your Free Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing Account
You can open your Amazon KDP account whether you have a book ready to sell or not. In fact, its a good idea to open your Amazon KDP account even before you have a book ready so you can access KDPs many helpful tools and publishing tutorials. This way, when you book is complete, your account is already in place.
To set up your Kindle Direct Publishing account, go to , and youll see this screen:
The KDP sign-in screen runs you through the basic up-front in a short video.
As you can see on the yellow Sign-in button, you need an Amazon account to create a KDP account. Its important to note that Amazon seriously frowns on individuals having more than one Amazon account. But, according to Dave Chesson of Kindlepreneur, Authors can open a separate account under a business entity, and this a good way to separate your book sales from your personal Amazon account.
Writers or business professionals with a business entity with its own tax number and bank account can sell books on Kindle Direct Publishing without having withholding taken out of royalty payments, says Chesson. Of course, royalty earnings must be included on business taxes, and Amazon provides the proper tax form for that. For professional authors or those selling books on Amazon for business purposes, its smart to handle it in a separate Amazon business account.
With this information at hand, you can complete your KDP account sign-up in about five minutes in one simple screen:
Promoting Your Online Bookstore
With a Shopify-powered bookstore, you can capture the emails of potential customers so that you can send them a weekly newsletter with links to your product pages.
You could also run competitions on social media, as well as share discount coupons with your loyal customers. Be sure to leverage referral marketing when you take either of these routes.
For example, you can ask people to tag their friends on your bookstores Instagram account for a chance to win a free product. This is a great way to expose your brand to a number of new audiences.
Another way to get more eyeballs is to upload high-quality images on your product pages.
Make sure to use a good camera and capture an image of the book from all angles.
Perhaps you have a couple of books with five different covers? In this case, share an image of each cover and use the product description area to tell customers that the book is available in various covers.
Besides all of that, I encourage you to partner up with social media influencers.
Social media influencers are people who have good engagement on social networks.
You can ask them to do a detailed review of your book and share the link of your store with their followers.
In return, you can give them a commission on sales that come through their store. However, most influencers will just do a review if you send them a free copy.
You can find social media influencers on Facebook, Instagram, as well as on YouTube.
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Get Your Pricing Right
One of the most important parts of getting sales is pricing, particularly early on, when you don’t have an established reputation. You need to be extremely competitive in the early stages, or you won’t gain any recognition as an established seller.
The potential of gaining a spot on the Buy Box is largely affected by your product’s price. This box shows specific offerings from sellers on Amazon and makes it easy for a customer to see the best options to add to their cart for a specific product.
Amazon has released an “Automate Pricing” tool that resides on the Seller Central page. This tool is convenient in helping you make pricing decisions. You can do things such as set rules. One example would be that you beat out the buy box by 1.5% until you hit a price floor. The price would automatically change with changes in competitor pricing.
You can also run promotions to try and increase your visibility and gain traction. It helps you rack up those valuable customer reviews as well. Promotions on Amazon could be things like:
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Lightning Deals